No Tears for Martyrs as Violence Mars Egypt Vote

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The doorway to Salah Adel’s room
frames the last hours of his life at home. A notebook on the
desk. Slippers by the bed. A pillow slightly indented from the
final time he laid his head there.

The scene forces a daily juggling of the pain and pride his
family feel. Pain over the loss of a 20-year-old son and brother
shot dead on a Cairo street as he joined Muslim Brotherhood
supporters confronting Egyptian security forces. Pride that he
died fighting for a cause in which he believed.

“We don’t shed tears for martyrs,” his mother, who asked
to be identified as Um Salah, or Mother of Salah, said as
mourners and well-wishers bustled around the family’s apartment
last month. “His brothers, when they saw the glory of
martyrdom, now want to win the same honor.”

More than 1,000 of Adel’s fellow protesters and 150 police
and army personnel have died in clashes following the military’s
July 3 removal of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi. The toll is
cleaving society, widening rifts that this week’s referendum on
a new constitution isn’t going to heal.

“Politics has become zero sum,” said Shadi Hamid,
director of research at the Brookings Doha Center. “It isn’t
about differing policies or give and take -- it’s about if you
win, I lose.”

Outbreaks of Violence

The referendum, which ends today, is part of the army-installed government’s declared plan to restore democracy, to be
followed by parliamentary and presidential elections. Tens of
thousands of soldiers deployed throughout the country were
unable to prevent outbreaks of violence during yesterday’s first
day of voting, when at least nine people were killed.

The Interior Ministry said it arrested 249 people seeking
to disrupt the ballot, more than half of them Brotherhood
members. The election commission said late yesterday that final
results won’t be published until electoral registers are checked
to ensure no one voted more than once.

The proposed charter is billed by the government as
enshrining civil liberties omitted from the Islamist-leaning
2012 document adopted under Mursi. Opposed by the Brotherhood as
an attempt to legitimize an army takeover, it has also drawn
criticism from secular activists for not limiting the powers of
the military and their courts, or protecting the rights of
religious minorities. It restricts presidents to two terms.

Vote Trumpeted

State media trumpeted the vote, with Al-Ahram newspaper’s
banner headline reading: “Egyptians Knock on the Doors of
Freedom and the Future.” Interim President Adly Mansour said
Egyptians were voting on the road map for the country’s future,
as well as for the constitution, Al-Ahram reported as he cast
his ballot.

Mamdouh Mohamed, 62, said the constitution’s endorsement
“will be the first step on the right track so the country can
move forward. Once it passes we will officially have the
legitimacy that the Brotherhood keeps talking about.”

Mohamed said he voted for Mursi, then grew disillusioned
with his policies. Now he’s an al-Seesi fan.

“We want a strong man and everyone loves him,” he said.
“God gave us this hero who saved the country. He is a wise man
and loyal to the country.”

Mursi, who served one year before he was kicked out by
Abdelfatah Al-Seesi, the defense chief he appointed, is on
trial. The Brotherhood describes his overthrow as a coup, and
the new government as “killers.” The group in turn has been
officially designated a terrorist organization.

New Arenas

The crackdown on the Brotherhood reached a peak with the
August killing of hundreds of protesters as security forces
raided Cairo sit-ins. While the violence has become less intense
since then, it’s also been channeled to new arenas.

The Brotherhood has staged rallies on university campuses,
while suicide bombings and gun attacks have spread from the
Sinai peninsula to the capital, strikes that authorities blame
on the Brotherhood without providing evidence of its
involvement. The group rejects the claims.

Amid the violence, Egypt’s economy is growing at its
slowest pace in two decades. One in seven of the workforce is
unemployed. Inflation is almost 12 percent.

In an interview at the family home, Adel’s father, Adel Abu
Hemeida, said his son took to the streets angered by the army’s
removal of Mursi, which he saw as heralding the return of the
autocratic rule Egypt had rejected.

Bullet Through Chest

Friends say they saw Adel, who got engaged a fortnight
earlier, rubbing his eyes and coughing from the effects of tear
gas, then collapsing as a bullet fired from what they described
as an armored personnel carrier tore through his chest.

“He died standing up for what he believed was right,”
Hemeida said. “I raised him to follow his own conscience, and
not to use me as the barometer for right or wrong. I knew he
would be a martyr” from the time he joined the 2011 uprising
against President Hosni Mubarak.

In place of the unity of that earlier revolt -- when
Islamists, Coptic Christians and secularists stood shoulder to
shoulder -- Mursi’s eviction has shattered the country’s social
and political foundation, Hemeida said.

“There is this kind of stoic resolve, and I think it’s
really deeply felt, that their cause is worth dying for. That’s
what makes this very difficult to resolve,” Brookings’ Hamid
said of Brotherhood supporters. At the same time, the government
has targeted Islamists with a “dehumanization” program, he
said. Televised funerals of soldiers and police have heightened
anti-Islamist sentiment.

Celebrated as Savior

Along the 6th of October Bridge in central Cairo signs
urging voters to support the new constitution are placed at 10-meter intervals. State media report daily on the “terrorism”
gripping the country, and have successfully linked it in many
minds to the Brotherhood. Al-Seesi is feted as a savior by
opponents of the Islamists, and urged to run for the presidency.

“They deserve it,” said 43-year-old Cairo resident Ahmed
Ali, referring to the crackdown on the Brotherhood, as he
listened to news of another clash on Dec. 12. “They want to
give the security forces a reason to confront them so that they
can maintain their status as victims.”

The Brotherhood says halting demonstrations would be a
capitulation in the face of a power grab by what it calls the
“junta.”

It was the crackdown, the stumbling economy and fear that
the gains of the 2011 uprising were at risk that pushed Adel
onto the streets, according to his father. It’s “up to God” to
decide if his blood was spilled in vain, he said.